Two British Movies "At the Top"

Here is a chance to look into a top fifties' film and its six-years' later sequel in one posting, something I have not done before.  Laurence Harvey plays the same character, Joe Lampton, in both Room at the Top (1959) and Life at the Top (1965).  Room is one of two Harvey performances (the other being The Manchurian Candidate) that stand out as the best screen work he ever did.

Joe has just moved from a bleak, poverty-stricken industrial town to a small English city where he gets employment as an accountant with the government.  He's not paid much which doesn't align with Joe's ambitious plans to become wealthy. He may have at first considered working for his wealth but that soon changes when he meets Susan Brown (Heather Sears), the daughter of the local industrial magnate (Donald Wolfit), at a neighborhood theater where locals are rehearsing for a play.  Joe joins the group and we get an early impression of his lecherousness and what an angry young man he is.

When Mr. Brown meets Joe and sees him as little more than a social-climbing womanizer, he sends his daughter abroad.  Joe then turns to the play's leading lady, Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret), 10 years older than he, looking middle-aged and is the long-suffering wife of a  pompous man (Allan Cuthbertson) who beats her.

Joe and Alice fall in love.  He's rather surprised that he's done so since love was never part of his overall plan.  The pair have a number of compelling scenes together but one of my favorites is when Alice tells Joe rather incidentally that she once posed nude for a painter and Joe becomes belligerent as he fills with jealousy.  Both Harvey and Signoret are brilliant in this scene.

Once Susan returns, however, Joe takes up with her again.  At an outdoor rendezvous they kiss and she confesses her love for him.  In turn he tells her he wants to do more than kiss.  Reluctantly Susan gives in.  She thinks losing her virginity is a wonderful experience but Joe doesn't tell her that he is turned off by it.

He tells Alice that he will no longer pursue either Susan or wealth and social status because he loves Alice so much.  She tells her husband  she wants a divorce.  He refuses and adds that if the affair continues, he will ruin Alice and Joe both financially and socially.

Signoret and Harvey

While the pair is mulling over some options, Brown calls Joe into his office and gives him the news that Susan is pregnant.  He tells Joe that he is to stop seeing Alice immediately, he is to marry Susan and he is to come to work for him immediately in a job as an executive which will fulfill all of Joe's dreams of wealth and status.  He also informs Joe there will be serious repercussions should Joe not accept his offer.

There is a heart-breaking scene where Joe tells Alice that while he still loves her, he has decided to marry Susan, whom he does not love.  She chews him out because she knows that he cannot give up the money and status dreams.  

Alice leaves her flat to get drunk in a pub and then leaves and intentionally crashes her car and dies as a result.  A grief-stricken Joe goes to the flat where they enjoyed their trysts and runs into Elspeth (Hermione Baddeley), a good friend of Alice's.  Elspeth, beyond upset, berates and screams at Joe, telling him that he killed Alice.  Soon the entire town seems to echo her sentiments.

Joe is still grief-stricken and acts like a zombie during his elaborate wedding and reception.  Susan has no idea what the problem is although she sees there is one.  The film ends with them driving away from the church and likely into a life and marriage of uncertainty.

Room at the Top has always been considered an important British film, the first of the British New Wave style of film released between 1959 and 1963 with the focus on the angry young man.  They were working class blokes who have trouble dealing with society's dictates, rules, laws.  Rebellious, yes, but dangerous fits better.  Harvey appeared in some and so did Richard Harris, Richard Burton and Albert Finney.  Such films, usually in grainy black and white, were called Kitchen Sink Realism.  

One of those angry young man was the writer of the piece, John Braine.  He belonged to an assortment of writers in the late 50s who were all angry and dismissive of society and tradition.  Room at the Top was his first novel but the screenplay by Neil Paterson did some rearranging. 

Braine called Harvey an exotic butterfly.  I think Braine must have been bonkers to say the actor wasn't right to play Lampton.  He said he had never approved of the casting of Laurence Harvey, despite the actor's great success in the role.  Joe Lampton, he said, was written as a red-blooded Yorkshireman not a Lithuanian bisexual.  Oh my brain swells with so many unkind responses but I'll leave it with try saying that today, Johnny Boy.

Harvey did, in fact, take some slings and arrows from critics because, like the character, the actor was not popular with his peers.  Many of his leading ladies have voiced their displeasure with him.  Signoret found him alternately amusing and full of himself but didn't seem to find filming with him a hateful experience.  Of course, she was quite the force of nature herself.

But consider this... Joe Lampton is angry, pushy, a user, a snob, a social-climber, priggish, gossipy, haughty, vicious, dismissive and thinks of no one but himself.  And so was Laurence Harvey.  If he was not right for the role, what was it he needed to do?  He understood Joe completely and despite what some circles say, he could act and was his best in just these types of parts and he played them often.  Here he got a spiky crewcut and was ready to go.  I don't think Harvey ever short-changed anyone with his emotional acting.

He was offered the part by the film's co-producer James Woolf who was Harvey's business manager and with whom he apparently enjoyed a longtime amour.  James and his brother John were the heads of Romulus Films.

Harvey and Sears

Apparently someone earlier on suggested the about-to-be-divorced Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons should play Joe and Susan and Vivien Leigh should play Alice.  I expect all might have been fine and one is pretty amusing indeed.  But most everyone was thrilled with the casting of Signoret.  How funny she is given top billing when Harvey's role is the whole film and he's rarely off screen.  Harvey was afraid she would act him off the screen.

Alice was to be 10 years older than Joe, into middle-age, commanding a few too many pounds and with a high sex drive.  Simone Signoret fit the role although she was a mere eight years older than Harvey.  I thought she imbued Alice with worldliness, warmth, sexuality and a lovely throaty laugh.  Looking to shake younger woman roles, she was looking for just such a part as Alice.

The author thought Heather Sears was a perfect Susan.  I never saw it that way.   It is one of those sweet, nice girl roles that are just dull.  I found little appeal in the actress.  She made very few movies.  She had very little to do with Harvey when the cameras weren't rolling.  She said she was afraid of his caustic tongue.

Donald Wolfit as Susan's no-nonsense, controlling father and Ambrosine Phillpotts (really!) as her snobby, society mother are both excellent and they would repeat their roles in the sequel.

Signoret would rightfully win the Oscar and about every other award she could for playing the sad Alice.  Paterson would also win an Oscar for his adapted screenplay.  Jack Clayton, who would only direct 10 films, would nab an Oscar nomination and would forever be associated as the director of this immensely popular film.  Other Oscar nominations went to Harvey, his real-life good friend Hermione Baddeley and also the Woolf brothers for best picture.

Here's a trailer:

It took six years to make a sequel.  The Woolfs would be back to produce.  A newbie Canadian director, Ted Kotcheff, would replace Clayton as director and Mordecai Richler would replace Paterson as the writer.  Of course Harvey would be back and as stated above, the actors playing Susan's parents would be back.  Susan would be back, too, but this time played by the actress who was the first choice for the first film, Jean Simmons.  It is called...

There were no illusions that the sequel would compare favorably to the original.  The talent was not as glowing for the sequel with the exception of Simmons.  Aside from her astute acting abilities, she was clearly hired for her name recognition.  I was thrilled, of course, given that I have always been madly in love with her and Harvey, too, had been one of my favorite male actors.  Seeing them together was great fun for me.

Regardless, I wonder why do a sequel at all if one has so little faith in it?   But I also think Life at the Top would be more highly regarded if one had not seen Room at the Top first.  But compared to the original it cannot be helped that Life would suffer.

The point of the film, of course, was to examine the Lampton marriage and it would be a hard, uncomplimentary look.  The story opens 10 years into the couple's marriage.  The crewcut is gone and he has the beautiful country estate, two small children, a Jaguar, servants, high society friends and a wife that he doesn't love anymore than the day he married her.  The point is constantly driven home that Joe has been corrupted by wealth and power although there's no denying that Joe was corrupt before them.

If Joe ever contemplated that happiness would come with riches and success, it's apparent that hasn't happened.  He seems as miserable and uptight as he's always been.  And things are cracking all around him.  He realizes he is being sidelined and diminished at work and that his father-in-law is still manipulating his life, business and personal.

Simmons and Harvey

He sleeps with his wife but that's all.  She is in need of a good tumble but Joe cannot be bothered.  It has amazed me a few times when friends of mine have this issue and the spouse who is not interested in having sex becomes furious when the wronged spouse finds it elsewhere.  But Joe comes home one night from work and finds Susan has been doing the naughty with his married best friend Mark (Michael Craig).  Joe berates Mark but saves most of his venom for Susan and their confrontation is one of my favorite scenes.

Joe, who has apparently not been cheating beforehand (rather hard to believe, frankly) decides that if Susan can cheat, so can he.  He corrals a TV personality, Norah (Honor Blackman) and they have a good go of it.

Harvey and Blackman

As his relationship with Norah gets more comfortable, Joe decides to leave Susan, which, of course, means his job is over too.  He moves in with Norah and hunts for work.  He is unable to find anything, becoming more morose, bitter and self-pitying as the days pass by.  Finally, she can't take it anymore and she leaves him, saying when he gets it together to let her know.

Susan visits and says she wants Joe to come home and they'll try harder than before to make a go of it.  She says her father is ill but both realize Joe will get back on at the company and go on to make something of himself.  What is it you really want, Joe? she asks him.  It's not really about what I want but what I'll settle for, he says.

One doesn't really have a lot of confidence that it will be any better than before.  It's just not how Joe is made.

It was not a tough shoot for Harvey.  After all, he knew Joe as well as he would ever know any other character he played.  He loved working with Simmons and they seemed to understand one another.

She gave up a retirement she'd put herself on in the early years of her second marriage to director Richard Brooks.  In doing so, she would return to England and make a veddy, veddy English movie.  It would be fun after having lived most of her life in California.  She was treated as a bit of a returning celebrity and it felt good.

Neither the director nor the writer wanted Blackman in the role of Norah.  In fact author Braine wanted Simmons to play Norah and for Heather Sears to return as Susan.  I'm very glad he didn't get his way.  Though Blackman's beauty and allure are undeniable, she, too, was probably hired for her name value, having a year earlier become famous the world over as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.  Her Norah is a strong, independent and very capable person.

Throughout both films, I was taken by such surprise at how lackadaisical everyone is toward adultery.  Everyone seems to assume that everyone else is doing it.  As long as it's not your spouse, no one seemed to care.  In the early 60s, those Brits certainly let their hair down, eh wot?

Here's a trailer: